His flight, which arrived Tuesday, was booked April 12. Back then, he was the team's general manager and had to be in town early for the NBA's Competition Committee meeting.

Man, have times changed.

Riley is now the Warriors' scouting director and the league's Competition Committee has been completely renovated to include four GMs instead of all 30.

"I'd be disingenuous if I said anything other than there is some real disappointment about not being the general manager anymore," Riley said Wednesday, a day after taking a hard swallow of his new reality. "I think the team is set to be pretty good. It took a lot of work to get it to this point, and I'd like to be in the position to enjoy the success.

"I guess I'm still in a position to be part of it, but it took some time to realize that this is something I can fully embrace."

Co-owner Joe Lacob announced April 24 that his handpicked assistant GM, Bob Myers, would be promoted to the top spot. The move was expected, but it was expected to happen in 2013 or 2014.

Lacob said Myers, one of the league's most successful agents, proved he was ready to make the move from the player representation side more quickly than originally planned. The owner also wanted the players to be clear about the team's leader in decision-making before exit interviews.

"I'm not exactly sure what the motivation was to make the change at that time," Riley said. "It was always something that I expected. I had talked to Joe about it, and I had talked to Bob about it. We knew it would take place, but it's hard to say why it had to happen right then."

Riley, 67, offered that honest response and then reiterated for the fourth time in a 15-minute interview that he has complete faith in both Lacob and Myers. Riley's lone regret is that he spent so much of his three seasons as general manager trying to clean up other people's messes.

He had to trade Jamal Crawford and Stephen Jackson in lopsided deals because of the players' disagreements with the organization. Riley also had to move Corey Maggette for spare parts in an attempt to get the salary cap in order.

"His demeanor and how he treats people is something special," Myers said of Riley. "It was a huge gift to me to be shown how to conduct yourself and how to go about your business. To a man, I don't think you'd find anyone who would say anything bad about him."

Maybe toughest on Riley, he had to fire long-time friend Don Nelson, then later his replacement, Keith Smart, because the new ownership rightly wanted to choose its own head coach.

"I don't want to cast blame on anybody else, but I had to get rid of talented players for a number of reasons," Riley said. Assistant general manager Travis Schlenk "and I spent the first year just getting in a position to start working on basketball."

Once he was able to work "on basketball" this season, Riley signed fan favorites Dominic McGuire and Nate Robinson, and he had a coup of a trade in landing Brandon Rush for Lou Amundson. Riley found a long-sought-after center in Andrew Bogut and will go into this month's draft with four picks.

And the draft is why Riley has lasted in the league for 24 seasons. In 2011, he picked Klay Thompson, Charles Jenkins and Jeremy Tyler - who all had productive rookie seasons. Lacob thinks so highly of Riley's talent evaluation that he extended his contract a year through the 2014-15 season.

"The position I have now is slanted very heavily toward the draft and working college basketball, which is something that's in my DNA," Riley said. "This is something I can enjoy doing, and it actually fits pretty well with where I am in my life."

Riley's picks

Larry Riley is entering his 24th NBA season, having been demoted from Warriors general manager to scouting director. He's renowned as a talent evaluator throughout the league for being part of staffs in Milwaukee, Vancouver, Dallas and Golden State that made productive draft choices.